


Trust in Yourself; Trust in the Force

by Pookaseraph



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, If you want - Freeform, Luke does the Yoda thing, Pre-Relationship, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 16:01:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6913855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pookaseraph/pseuds/Pookaseraph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luke begins Rey's training, and discuss some of the most fundamental aspects of unity with the Force.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trust in Yourself; Trust in the Force

**Author's Note:**

> From TFA Kink Meme: <https://tfa-kink.dreamwidth.org/1082.html?thread=1388090#cmt1388090>
> 
> "Inspired by the 'Luke Trolls Rey' prompt from like 24 pages back:
> 
> Luke is incorporating some of Yoda's teaching methods into Rey's training. One of these is him hanging onto her while she climbs cliffs, vines etc. One of his reasons, besides endurance training, is to be her 'safety net' if disaster strikes - he can always stop their fall with the Force.
> 
> So when they're climbing something and Rey is 'doing all the work' she starts to feel this counterintuitive sense of comfort and security when his arm (or legs) is/are wrapped around her waist and he's straddling her back, and his head is nestled on her shoulder while he murmurs softly about the Force.
> 
> Eventually this bites them. They're hanging from a cliff using one of Rey's climbing ropes. It's a really hot day (they're both in tank tops)following a rainstorm, and the rope slips from where it's locked to the cliff. Panic ensues (Rey), but Luke talks her through it and she connects it again...
> 
> ...And is suddenly hyperaware of being pressed to his heartbeat, and how there is virtually nothing except thin, sweat-drenched cloth between them, but also of that feeling of security and trust...
> 
> Take it from there, can be sex, kissing or nothing physical besides more trust. Super-emotional-closeness is also love!"

Rey was getting more and more certain that Master Luke was just... messing with her. It started normal enough: lift Artoo up, lift the Falcon up, find Luke hidden among the _dozens_ of cave systems on the tiny little island. Those things, at least to Rey, seemed fairly reasonable, and normal, and she was happy to comply.

It got kinda silly after that.

Doing a handstand while a grown male human stood on the tops of her feet _did not seem normal_.

"Do not rely just on your raw strength," Luke said, because she could really pay attention when she was upside down! "Use the Force to lighten your load, to allow your strength to be but a portion of what supports you."

Rey grumbled for a moment, before she flicked her feet and used the Force to 'lighten her load' alright, giving Master Luke a hardy push, only for him to flip gracefully and land neatly on a foot and knee at eye level with her.

"It's... it's impossible, Master. Muscles can only go so far before they give out."

"Impossible?" He asked, and he reached out a hand, placing it between her hands. Her balance, at least, was getting much better. "Place your hands on mine."

She moved into the position he was asking for a moment later, her balanced, her two hands atop his one, and in one careful movement he rose from his knee, stood, and then raise the single hand over his head, so she was resting atop his palm, over two meters in the air.

"A feather or the Falcon, all are one in the Force," he said, giving her his own shove, and Rey landed as he had, although far less gracefully. "Come, come."

Rey had a feeling she was _really_ going to be complaining about the impossible soon.

It started with a swim, which probably would have been far easier if she'd learned the mechanics of _swimming_ more than a month ago. After that, the two of them dried off for a moment, with Luke leaving the waterlogged robes he had been wearing to dry, and then pulled out the rope he brought.

"So... use the Force to set the rope up?" She asked.

Luke smiled. Not good.

He began a complicated mess of looping the rope around her body, across her waist, twice between her legs, and Rey stood through it carefully as he continued to work with the rest of the rope, leaving what looked to be several loops of rope that would hang down maybe a half-meter below her feet.

"You will be climbing the rock face without a rope," Luke said. "All of the support you need is already there."

"Trust the Force, right?" Rey said, and Luke didn't even dignify her words with an answer, instead he began to hook his feet and legs through the loops he'd tied off. "Wait... what are you doing?"

"Going with you, of course."

Rey looked over at him, and then at the rock, before she shrugged. She could use the help, she supposed.

She was less than a meter off the ground when she looked below her and saw that Luke was just... sitting there, and he looked to be quite comfortably suspended in the rope saddle, almost... meditating.

"You're not going to help, are you?"

"I'm here, aren't I?"

Rey glowered at the top of his head, and he looked up at her with that stupid, ridiculous, guileless smile.

"Fine," she said, looking back up at her task. It was _fine_ , it wasn't like she ever got any help on Jakku, she had to look out for herself, she had to catch _herself_ when she fell, she had to get _herself_ back up.

Luke could talk about opening herself up, letting the Force in, but that didn't mean she was _stupid_ , in the end, you only had yourself.

"When we allow ourselves to truly embrace the Force, we are open to everything, the stone, the water, even the air, we are... vulnerable, but only in that vulnerability can we truly give ourselves over to trust in the Force."

"Vulnerability," she choked out, thrusting a hand up, her toe seeking a hold to allow herself to lever herself, and her _dead weight_ up. "That's a good way to get hurt, killed."

"But it is only when we are vulnerable that we can touch others, reach out to them, and allow yourself to... connect."

Rey gave her muscles a good old Force push, levering herself up even though she was carrying far more than her scant weight. It wasn't that bad, she was used to carrying pounds of salvage before... but salvage didn't usually natter at her.

"If vulnerability is so greater, why are you here? I was in exile by accident, you chose it." Rey wasn't opposed to calling her teacher on his poodoo. She set her other foot, checked her hold, and then stretched to meet her next handhold. "You can't tell me this wasn't a protective shell. I see the way you look off into the distance, and I can get a sense of what's rattling around in your mind."

"I never claimed I was a _good_ teacher," Luke responded with a rueful chuckle. "You are both right and not right, I sought... a different vulnerability, one where I was fully opened to the Force, but you're right it allowed me to protect myself from other... realities."

"So we _both_ need some work in that area, huh?"

"I allowed you to stay," Luke answered.

That hit Rey like a knife in the gut as her mind followed that path. Luke was teaching her, was opening himself up to the exact same loss he'd experienced over a decade ago. The slight distraction of her thoughts was her undoing, she pushed forward with feet on slippery rock, and unsure footing. Suddenly she was holding onto the rock face with little more than three fingers.

A glance down showed Luke simply... sitting.

'Cut the dead weight' her mind told her. For all he was tied to her it was a simple saber cut to drop him. But that tiny voice was drowned out by the intense... wrongness of such a thought. She scrambled, her feet searched for purchase, her other hand looked for a hold, the muscles in her shoulder _screamed_ at her that they could not hold _her_ much less her and Luke.

No, she could do this, she dug her feet in, searched again and again for where her feet could rest and found nothing, eventually her fingers gave way and she fell... only to find herself caught in one loose arm by Luke, her body pressed tight to his, his other hand holding onto a rock, his feet dangling as hers had been.

"I've got you," he said, and he leaned forward just enough so that she didn't have to look into his eyes. "Calm yourself, let your body be guided by the Force."

"You... you caught me?"

He chuckled, shifting himself so that he had a foot resting against the rock face as well. "Well I didn't come along _just_ to be... what was it? Dead weight?"

She flushed with embarrassment from her uncharitable assessment of him from only a few minutes before.

"Easy," he said. "Calm." His voice was... so distant and yet so close, their bodies were close enough that she could feel his heartbeat like a second heart in her own chest, a soft, steady rhythm to stand as counterpoint to her rampaging one. "Steady yourself and regain your footing."

Rey took a deep breath, and then another, his calming heartbeat created the pace her own heart slowly adopted. At first she was nervous about her movements, worried about disrupting Luke's own grip on the rocks, but she realized with a growing sense of awe that it really didn't seem to matter where his hands were, or his feet, he could stand there indefinitely.

"I..." She looked at the rock, her hands finally grabbing solid holds, her feet finding their purchase, and Luke shifted away so they could stand abreast on the rock face. "I don't think I... I don't think I'm used to the idea of someone catching me."

Finn had, of course, he'd come after her to help save her from Kylo, but that was... once, one time in a lifetime of trust and hope being rewarded with disappointment.

"Trust," Luke said. "You must trust both yourself and the Force. You are coming to trust the Force, slowly, but despite your self-reliance I think you will find the struggle to fully trust yourself even harder."

That didn't make much sense to Rey, but Luke was usually right about things in the end.

She settled back to continue her climb, and wasn't certain why she was surprised when Luke went back to his seat below her. Her path was slightly easier, though: feel, touch, stretch, reach, push, settle, repeat.

A long climb later, Rey crested the lip of the cliff and gave Luke a firm tug to bring the rope sling up to the cliff side, before Rey groaned and sprawled on her back looking up at the sky. The pain she had ignored for the climb slowly coming back.

"Sit up," Luke said.

Despite her exhaustion, it took her only a few moments to comply. Luke came up behind her and a gentle hand rested at her shoulder while his left dug carefully into the muscles of the shoulder she likely strained in her near fall.

"Nothing torn," he said softly, the heel of his palm roamed for a few moments longer, and Rey could feel the lingering soreness fade away to nothing, replaced with a gentle coolness that slid into her muscles.

"That's... the Force?" She asked, awed as her body relaxed even further.

"Yes, it allows us to connect to others, feel and ease their pain..." Luke quieted, and Rey allowed herself to be lost in the connection between them, their bodies brought together only by the heel of Luke's palm that seemed to radiate comfort to every corner of her body.

Connect... huh? It was hard to trust, but she did trust Luke, that much was obvious, he had been nothing but kind, had saved her from falling without a second thought, and he was... hurt. Rey knew that, she'd seen tiny snippets of it in her vision and in her dreams, she allowed her body to relax, to take in the gently numbing chill of Luke's touch through the Force, but also the solid warmth of his palm.

She reached out towards Luke, carefully, gently, and found a poorly tended garden of emotion just below the surface: self-loathing, sadness, comfort from the little human contact he afforded himself now... attraction...?

Rey gasped and Luke's hand recoiled instantly. She turned to him only to see him look away, his eyes closed, his breaths deep and calming.

"... Master?"

He shook his head.

"Isn't that..." She fumbled for her own words. "Isn't that a connection?"

He chuckled, rueful and perhaps slightly bitter. "Not one we can allow ourselves, Rey, not just between us, but between others. Such a connection is selfish, possessive, and cannot exist without an undercurrent of jealousy and fear, no matter how buried."

Rey considered his words, and realized she couldn't agree with them, but nor could she refute them. She knew so little of that sort of emotion that to argue on the matter would be pointless. Still, it was clear Luke believed that...

In the meantime, she would study, and perhaps in time she would consider readdressing the topic of connection.


End file.
